Cidney Swanson

ScriptSuperhero.com: Cidney, welcome to ScriptSuperhero.com as part of your blog tour. We’ve hosted such luminaries as Charlaine Harris, L.J. Sellers, Amanda Hocking, and T.L. Haddix, and we’re proud to add you to the roster. For the uninitiated, start out by telling us a little bit about the Ripple trilogy in general.

Cidney Swanson: The Ripple Trilogy tells a story of a girl who can turn invisible, the boy she’s falling for, and the neo-Nazi scientist hunting them both.

SS: In less than a year, you’ve published your entire trilogy, which includes Rippler, Chameleon, and now Unfurl. How long had you been working on these three novels before you reached the point of publication?

CS: I started on the trilogy in early 2009. The first two novels underwent substantial rewrites over the space of 30 months. I found the third one just fell into place with very little rewriting of the story arc. There was plenty of revision, though! I knew the first two would be very cliff-hanger-y, so I didn’t want to put anything out there until I was confident I could get them all out in the space of six months. As a reader, I hate waiting a year (or more) for sequels. But I figured most readers would be okay waiting three months in between.

Rippler by Cidney Swanson. Cover art by Phatpuppy Art.

CS: It turns out that it was a great decision for me. I’m thrilled to be where I am today, with a growing readership and some very loyal fans. A big part of my decision to quit my day job and write full time was based on the fact that I thought I could see a paycheck faster going indie than going with a traditional publisher. (A paycheck meaning that I could continue to write—my real goal.) As it was, I went 25 months without that paycheck! So not a whole lot faster than if I’d sold a manuscript within, say, six months of quitting. It was a good time to have to get by on less, though, with so many losing jobs or out of work because of the recession.

SS: One of the major touchstone themes in your trilogy is the idea of abusive boyfriends. Now, in your story, Will is not actually abusive to Sam, but in defending him Sam offers up explanations to her friends that are eerily similar to those offered by victims of actual abuse. This had to be a tricky balancing act; how have readers reacted to your handling of such a sensitive issue?

CS: Poor Will! Such a nice guy. Such an awful set of misapprehensions! (I made sure Will was exonerated half way through the trilogy.) But seriously, once I had introduced the specter of abusive relationships, I felt it was important to treat the subject with seriousness. As far as reader reactions go, most have responded strongly to Gwyn’s treatment of Sam rather than the suspected abuse. I get lots of readers telling me they wanted to shake Gwyn by the shoulders. The other response I see from readers is gratitude that I included both Sylvia’s real back-story abuse and addressed Sam’s perceived abuse. In their real lives, teens have complicated and awful things to deal with, and I think a book can give you permission to be bolder as you work through some areas of your life. At least, that is my hope.

Chameleon by Cidney Swanson. Cover art by Phatpuppy Art.

CS: Absolutely. Most teen fiction readers want to do the right thing. And by the time you’re a teen, you’ve likely had a chance to see how complicated that can become: how you can cause unintended collateral damage when you do one thing right. Also, as a teen, there are so many things that are out of your control. How you spend the bulk of your day. Where you live. What you eat for dinner. But one thing you can control is how you respond things life throws at you.

SS: As a source for your main villains, you turned to World War II and the Nazis as the source of the evil in your story. Given that today’s teens were born in the mid-1990s, which was already fifty years removed from that era, and is now seventy years removed from it, what drove your decision to select these folks as your main villains? Was it to shed light on that era for modern readers?

CS: Not exactly! At least, not at first. I had been aware there was a name for the science that attempts to perfect the human species (eugenics) but I didn’t know a lot about the movement. Once I researched eugenics, I realized my villain would have been completely in sync with the movement which reached its nadir in Nazi Germany. My goal in storytelling is primarily to offer a good read. But having said that, messages will undoubtedly show up because, like everyone else on the planet, I have a certain take on the world. Once I’d “uncovered” the link of my villain to Nazi philosophy, I knew I had a chance to shed some light on an era that teens don’t have an automatic connection to. I’ll actually be blogging on this topic soon!

SS: Most of Rippler was set in California. Book two, Chameleon, took us to Paris. Give us a brief idea of where the action of Unfurl is set, and how important setting is to your narrative.

CS: I am definitely one of those authors who believe setting is an additional character in a narrative. Unfurl occurs simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. We revisit the imaginary town of Las Abuelitas, located in the Sierra Nevada foothills of central California, as well as hopping around in Europe: from Paris to Rome, from Nice to Carcassonne and Montpellier, and finally returning to the Loire Valley in France.

SS: Your books feature some amazing cover art. Tell us about your cover artist.

CS: Claudia of www.phatpuppyart.com is the cover artist for the series. Isn’t she awesome? I fell in love with her style and have squeeeed over everything she’s produced for me. Plus, she’s a wonderful human being!

SS: In the past year, you’ve gone from unpublished to the author of a complete trilogy. How has this experience changed you as a writer? What have you learned from the journey?

CS: Hmm. Big questions. I’ve learned that it is okay to trust my instincts. I mean, I had this crazy story idea. A girl who turns invisible? Really? Where are her fangs or wolfish boyfriends? We all know we aren’t supposed to write for trends. That we should tell the story we have inside us. So I did, but it felt pretty scary at times. Would anyone want to read it? (Thankfully, yes!) Another huge revelation for me: I have learned that I can write on deadline! I’m now confident that if the work needs to be done, I know how to get myself to do it. (Mostly the BIC method: butt-in-chair.)

SS: Is Unfurl the last readers will see of this set of characters, or could some of them turn up in future works?

CS: Unfurl is the last in the series. But these characters haunt me as I’m working on my new stuff. So, never-say-never.

Unfurl by Cidney Swanson. Cover art by Phatpuppy Art.

CS: Ha! What people tell me is that the creepy back story really draws them in. Next, I’ve had both serious runners and serious non-runners tell me the descriptions of running made them want to get out and pound the pavement. Readers also love Will, my guy-hero, quite seriously. (And he’s totally blushing, shaking his head, and walking off as I write this.)

As far as what sets it apart? Well, I think the fact that boy meets girl doesn’t instantly = omigod-I-heart-you-forever is pretty appealing to a lot of readers. And while the tale is fantastical, it leans in a Michael Chrichton-esque direction rather than in the magical-creature direction. I get a lot of “I’ve never read anything like this before” and “A breath of fresh air in a genre that can feel stale.” So, um, that’s pretty nice! If you like a little mystery, a little action, a little maybe-love story, and some invisibility, you might like this.

SS: I realize it may be a bit early, since your focus right now is on the conclusion of the Ripple trilogy, but can you tease us with an idea of what your fans might expect from your next project?

CS: Tease? Abso-frickin-lutely! I’m revising a piece right now that has pointe shoes and hobgoblins and Russian food. I also have a first draft of a sci-fi novel that’s aging. As in, set aside to improve the flavor. Like wine or cheese.

SS: Which character in the Ripple trilogy did you find to be most like yourself as a teenager?

CS: Hmm. There are bits of me in all the characters. Some of them were fairly hidden when I was a teen. For instance, I have a fair bit of Sir Walter, but you can bet your skittles I didn’t let that show when I was in middle-school or high school. I tended to hide my Will-ish bits as well. (Love of learning, and history.) I struggled with confidence, like Sam, but I was secretly very sure about some things, like Gwyn. Not a great answer, huh? Mostly, these characters were all pretty different from who I was as a teen!

SS: And now we’ve reached an important point in our interview. In celebration of Barbara Walters, who famously once asked President Jimmy Carter what kind of tree he’d like to be, while he was still in office and wrestling with important matters of state, I always like to include in my interviews a “completely out of left field, non-sequitur question. Are you ready?

CS: Um . . .

SS: Here goes: Star Trek, Star Wars, or Doctor Who? Explain your choice.

CS: Star Trek. Totallistically Star Trek. Something to do with being inoculated by Kirk, Spock, and Uhura when I was only three, I’m sure, but Star Trek has always been my deep and enduring addiction. Through the years, I’ve loved me some Jean-Luc and Cisco, too, and even Janeway grew on me. But looking back, Uhura was such a positive role model for me; I loved seeing a woman-astronaut. Yes, the show was camp-y and yes, it’s dated. But the idea that Russians and Asians and African-Americans and Caucasians and Vulcans could all get along and (gasp!) learn from one another? Now, that’s some good stuff there.

SS: I’m afraid that’s it. Thank you for your time, and best wishes with the ongoing success of your trilogy.

CS: Thanks so much for the opportunity to visit with you and your readers, Craig!

Dad is back home and healthy and in his routine again. And I’ve reset and gotten back to writing. No need for boot dryers here; I’m moving around too much. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Here’s the deal: I’ve made not much progress on EMBER, but I’m getting excited about EyeCU, and I’ve been enjoying a surge of contract work that is bringing in half-decent income finally. That leaves a bit less time for blogging, but I’m busy at it.

I’ll do what I can to check in mid-week, but no promises. Sorry this one’s so short, but I really want to get back to… you guessed it… writing!

When under stress, she finds relief in creative expression. However, she’s not primarily a writer, she’s a musician. And we had to leave her guitar behind in Minnesota, to be shipped out later, and to ship it safely is going to cost over $200.

Being without an outlet has been hard on her. It would be similar to how I’d feel if I couldn’t write. Se this weekend we decided to invest in a more temporary solution and get her a lower-cost replacement guitar. Sure, it’s not as nice as the one sitting in Minnesota; it’s not an Ibanez Bass or Guitar. But it’ll get the job done while we save up for shipping the nicer one.

I’m glad we found a way to get a guitar in her hands. It’ll make life a bit more manageable for her.

The past week has been rather taxing on my ability to get any writing done. And I mean any, at all.

My father, a World War II veteran, has been living with my wife and me for over three years now. At the age of 89, we know the days behind him vastly outnumber the days in front of him. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to deal with when something happens that reminds you he could leave us sooner than later.

Last Friday, day slipped getting out of the shower due to losing consciousness; it meant calling an ambulance and a trip to the hospital, though they released him a few hours later.

Then on Sunday, normally a productive day for me writing-wise, Dad fell asleep on the couch in the living room. My wife heard a change in his breathing and tried to rouse him, but he began throwing up instead of waking up. Scary moment.

Fortunately, ambulances in this area are fast and we had paramedics in our apartment a second time in less than 48 hours. This time, they categorized it as an unknown cardiac event and hospitalized through Tuesday for observation.

We’re now trying a change in his medication, to see if that keeps him stable. So far, it’s working.

But it all added up to a lot of stress and not much working getting done. Sometimes, life interferes with writing. Sometimes, you need to let it.

This was one of those times.

With a NaNoWriMo-style event, my goose would be cooked. Instead, I just re-shuffle the cars, bear down, and start over working toward my goals. Again.

So, I have no progress, really, to report at this time. The only upside to the past week is that my shiny new Dell desktop PC arrived. It’s a lot more stable and powerful and I’m a happy camper on that score.

Hopefully that means I’ll even-keel out soon and get back to writing shortly.

On Thursday, I made my goal for forward progress. On Friday, since I write in the evening while doing contract work in the late morning and afternoon, I was busy observing Shabbat.

On Saturday after Shabbat was over, I found myself too exhausted to write. So tonight I plan to double my production goal, which means writing 3,000 words, to make up for it. And that’s that.

I’ll say this: right now, it’s EyeCU that’s juicing me up creatively, making me excited about writing. Ember, still in updating mode, is drudgery at the moment. It’ll juice me up once again, like a nice dose of Gatorade, once I get out of updating mode.

But for now, that’s where it’s all at.

So, I’ve decided to set fewer goals this round, and place the emphasis purely on production. That means pumping out words regularly to meet achievable goals.

Now, at the moment, I’m working on two big projects. Yes, two. Because I needed to start a project outside of the Ember Cole series, in order to tackle EMBER, the second book of the series. Sometimes you just need variety. This new project has a working title of EyeCU, and is for slightly older readers, and is more on the suspense/horror side of things, not as paranormally-inclined as the Ember Cole series.

Whereas EMBER is shaping up to be a longish novel, EyeCU feels like it’ll be a slimmer, more focused plot. It might even end up being novella length, rather than a full-length novel. Time will tell.

All that being understood, here are my goals for Round 1 of ROW80 in 2012:

1. Work on either EMBER or EyeCU six days per week, excluding the Sabbath (sundown Friday through sundown Saturday).

2. Produce a minimum of 1,500 words of new progress on either project, or combined, per working day.

3. Finish at least one of these projects by the end of the Round, and send it off to beta readers.

That’s it. That’d necessitate that I’d produce over 100,000 words of new progress this round, which should be enough to finish both projects.

Those are my only three goals. Pure production. Nothing else matters right now, except getting a couple new titles drafted and ready for beta-readers.

Simple. And challenging.

Why do I say that? Because I’ve now had a little success as a writer, and there are times when the last thing I want to do is write.

Sure, once I fire up the word processor, that goes away. The trick is to be more interested in firing up Focus Writer 1.3.5.1 and getting to work, than I am in, say, seeing what comes up when I type laser spine institute into Google.

Of course, such distractions can sometimes compliment the writing task. For example, when I wrote SHADA, one night I got bored and not that motivated and I somehow got it into my head to find out what they called the sort of scientists who studied beetles.

I found the term and that led me to William Kirby’s Wikipedia entry and before you know it, I had my head filled with that stuff. So I integrated what I’d learned into making Willow a science nerd who’d like to speak to William Kirby, a man who died long, long ago.

But more often than not, distractions are no more than that: distractions. What more can I come up with to put off clicking on that handy word processor icon?

There’s no easy answer to that. A person just has to ride out such ennui, usually by clicking on the word processor icon and getting to work. There’s not much else that works.

The past year has seen me complete two novels and put them out there for public consumption, as well as make significant progress on the third. Also, under a pseudonym, I’ve put out a handful of short fiction that’s done okay. So that’s not bad progress for the first year.

My sales are nowhere near where I’d like them to be. But then again, no matter where they are, they probably wouldn’t be where I’d like them to be. We always want more sales, as writers. Part of human nature.

As my progress hasn’t changed much since the last entry when I reviewed my goals, I’m not going to repeat them here. What I will do is say that I’m quite happy with how ROW80′s accountability system has aided me in making real progress on my writing career, throughout the entire year.

When I started ROW80 Round 1 in January 2011, I had no books published. Now I have two books (and some short fiction) out there and I’m starting to slowly see some money come back to me for all my efforts.

It’s got me eager to do more. Well, most of the time. Sometimes I get some temporary inertia, as I recently posted about. But then I get excited about this or that and I’m back on track.

So, I guess all this is to say a big Thank You to all my ROW80 accountability partners and to let you know I’ll be back again for the next ROW80.

Whether it’s called ROW 80 Round 5, or ROW80 Round 1 (2012), I don’t know. All I know is, I’ll be back.

It’s not a lot. Certainly not enough to live on, not yet. But… a little money. There are actually changes to my numbers when I check KDP, most of the time.

That’s cool.

What’s not cool? The reaction I’m experiencing. As excited as the sales make me, I find myself become a bit complacent. More hesitant to write, rather than more eager.

It’s weird. It makes no sense. It makes me wonder if I should be looking into retirement communities I can’t afford. Since clearly there’s a part of me that just isn’t motivated.

Fortunately, these moods aren’t lasting long. Once I actually force myself to fire up the word processor, I get into it again and enjoy writing the next project.

But this pull toward inertia is… troublesome.

We all understand that whether you’re browsing books on Amazon or browsing maternity clothes at babiesnbellies.com, the more products you have to offer, the better chance you have of making a sale. Right now, my published works consists of two titles. I have three or four short projects I could put out quickly, and get to where I need to be a lot faster.

But would the EMBER COLE series suffer as a result? SHADA is Book 1 in that series, and if I divert into a few short fiction projects before I put out EMBER, the second book in the series, I could frustrate readers. It’s a constant juggling act. I need to be cloned.

As we’re closing in on the end of Round 4, I thought I’d post my progress toward my goals, as a review.

DONE 1) Complete guest blogs and interviews and various other content for SHADA blog tour.

DONE 2) Schedule the radio interview that is a part of the blog tour, and get that done and over with.

That radio interview can still be found on iTunes, or streamed directly off Craig-Hansen.com.

DONE 3) Participate daily in the tour, once it starts.

DONE 4) Do a quick run-through on EMBER to account for new background details that I created while writing SHADA.

MOSTLY DONE 5) Goal of 1,000 words a day on EMBER until it’s finished.

There are days I don’t reach 1,000 words, and days I do.

DONE 6) Try not to over-commit myself to things outside writing EMBER, which I constantly do.

I’ve been learning to say, “No.” Sometimes.

INCOMPLETE 7) Once EMBER’s complete, if ROW80 Round 4 is still going on, work on getting it revised, beta-read, edited and published. Otherwise this will become a goal for the next round… or several of next round’s goals.

We’ll be well into the next round before EMBER’s ready for this step.

It takes longer, of course, but always helps me catch some previously-missed mistakes, and I take that opportunity to brush up the eBook version as well, with the same corrections. But now that’s all done and my full energies can be redirected to the follow-up to SHADA, EMBER.

Speaking of EMBER, I tried leaping ahead and making new progress, but it was slow-going and awkward, so I leaped back to the middle to finish the updating process. I know my characters so much better now than I did the first time through. That’s where writing SHADA helped a lot. But I’ll be in fresh progress territory soon enough.

That’s all for now